Bigotry Determined Webster’s New
World Dictionary defines “bigot” as “a person who holds blindly and
intolerantly to a particular creed, opinion, etc.” and “bigotry” as “the
behavior, attitude, or beliefs of a bigot.”

Police State Thomas Kachadurian’s column might get the facts right but misses the story.

Oppose The Shell Game Is this a
Shell Game? As a Democrat, I support increased taxes on motor fuels and
vehicles to provide funding for our transportation infrastructure.

Sugars On The Way Senator Patrick
Colbeck from Canton introduced a bill and the Senate passed it allowing
schools and Girl & Boy Scout troops to have up to 3 bake sales per
week.

What constitutes
probable cause? This is one of many questions that has been going
around in my head since my house was raided last Wednesday!

Last
Wednesday should have been a celebratory day in my life. My boyfriend
had just bagged a trophy buck and it was the eve of my birthday. My
festive spirit was quickly halted when I received a call from TNT
informing me that they were at my house. When I returned home from work,
I found many police cars and officers at my house. My boyfriend was
being detained in a police car, and officers were going through my
personal belongings. I found out later that the officers busted into my
house, and had held my boyfriend and house guest at gun-point.

I
was told that based on two tips from informers and my boyfriend’s
history, they felt just cause in raiding my house, instead of knocking
on the door and politely asking, which they said was the usual protocol!

One
of the informers told police that my boyfriend, Zach, had an illegal
marijuana grow room and was manufacturing marijuana. The second
informer, which was a recorded citizen tip, stated that Zach was selling
crack-laced joints. Both of which were lies!

Zach told
the officers as soon as they entered that there was a grow room. The
room belonged to me, and I had my medical marijuana card. They proceeded
anyway. If there had been an investigation, why didn’t the officers
know this bit of crucial information before they came into my house?
They found no evidence of illegal substances! They also found no
evidence of any type of sales. They found nothing out of the ordinary,
except a few immature plants over my limit and a few pills with no
prescription attached.

The medical marijuana laws are “milky.”

Although
there is a limited number of plants allowed, what really constitutes as
a plant? The few that were removed from my house were small immature
plants that contain no THC.

The point to my letter is why did the police feel justified in raiding my house...

I am writing to
support Proposition 3, which requires Michigan’s utilities to get 25% of
their power from renewable sources by 2025. I don’t think that our
utilities, in flatly rejecting Proposition 3, have fairly evaluated the
considerable renewable resources that exist in our state.

Take
wind, for example. If you look at a wind map of Michigan, (Google
“Michigan 50 meter wind map”) you will see that just offshore Michigan
is surrounded by winds that are classified as excellent to outstanding.
Offshore wind power is rapidly being developed by Denmark, Germany and
the U.K. The technology could readily be adapted to the coast of
Michigan.

Very little will happen, however, unless we
commit ourselves to a significant increase in the production of
renewable electric power. There needs to be a market in order for
investors and manufacturers to show interest. Proposition 3 will create
that market...

I am appalled that a
guest opinion writer in the Northern Express would insinuate Kirsten
Keilitz was not qualified for a probate judge job simply because she
does not have children. The probate court does not only deal with
children, but elder law, estates, etc.

Many of us who
have children have not yet had to deal with aging parents as Kirsten
has. (And let’s be honest, many judges with families are not involved
with their own children.) She is both professionally and personally
qualified for the job. She is smart, sensitive, rational, and
trustworthy. She is the best candidate for judge.

Colleen Shannon • via email

Oil biz targeting Obama

Why
are Republicans opposed to Obama’s plan to allow taxes on very high
incomes to return to where they were during the Clinton years? Have they
forgotten that when Clinton raised the top tax rate, what followed was
arguably the best economy in American history...

Mitt and Ann Romney
have five sons who have never served in the military but Mitt wants to
expand the military budget. Mitt was of age during Vietnam but he didn’t
serve either.

Since the Bush era, we have been in two
wars, for what? Iraq isn’t fixed and the Afghanistan people have been
fighting since well before Jesus was born and it’s never going to end
until they end it themselves. Most times, the reason for going to war is
to enable the manufacturers of munitions (and now services) to make
money.

The Republicans have made it their mission to
replace Obama. Not only is he a Democrat but he’s black. When you
overhear someone in a crowd of very well-dressed, deck boat
shoe-wearing, bling-dripping Americans say that he and his wife are just
“uppity n____s,” it does not bode well for our country.

I
really do want to see more tax returns from the Romneys. I’m also
wondering whether the reason he’s not providing these returns is that he
would owe more to his church for his tithe.

I don’t
believe he’s a bad man, but he believes that he and his party can
continue to climb to the top of the ladder on the backs of people who
are trying desperately how to figure out how to feed their children or
purchase their medications. Jobs for any American who wants to work
would certainly be a welcome change, but I haven’t heard a plan from
Mitt...

Trust
a liberal to label his opposition as “hysterical” (re: “NRA hysteria
unfounded,” Letters 8/27). All that libs can do is name-call.

Anyhow,
the NRA was and is anything but hysterical in its warning about Obama
and the Left being bitterly opposed to an armed citizenry. The fact that
they spent their first-term political capital almost exclusively on
getting Obamacare through does not mean that they have given up on the
basic leftist goal of suppressing the people’s right (guns don’t have
rights) to be armed. Also, Wayne LaPierre’s salary is closer to
$600,000, after 35 years with the NRA.

Lastly,
if you are going to call the NRA a branch of the Republican Party,
which it most decidedly is not, why not point out, far more truthfully,
that the Trial Lawyers Association, now laughably renamed the American
Justice Association, is one of the biggest direct financial supporters
of the Democratic Party...

Women have
struggled for the right to vote in 1920, for equal pay for equal work,
equity in upper management jobs, the resources to care for their
families, fairness in health insurance coverage, and the right to make
our health care choices.

Across the
country, slick sales pitches are being made for wind power. The irony is
that those salesmen are working for the natural gas industry. When the
wind dies down, something else has to power up; that something is
usually a gas turbine burning natural gas, which is the only sort of
power plant being built these days.

All those Ontario
wind farms are backed up by a gas-burning plant you don’t see; gas
burners mean gas buyers and gas buyers mean fracking. Salesmen know
which side their bread is buttered on.

If we want to
stop burning things to make electricity, our best option is also the
most-vilified and least-understood: nuclear energy...

A lady
from Oklahoma sent in a pronatural gas/fracking response letter in your
August 13th issue. I wonder, do they have something called irony in
Oklahoma?

I ask this because it makes perfect sense
that someone from a dry, flat, hot, nearly treeless place like Oklahoma
would want to vacation in a land of verdant forests, rolling hills and
immense stretches of clean water like our Michigan. The irony comes in
when she lectures us on how wonderful natural gas drilling/fracking is,
and that those of us who are rightly terrified of it are
“unenlightened.”

Lady, the only way we can keep this area a vacation/everyday living paradise is to stop fracking cold...

Hey there,
y’all, I am here visiting beautiful Northern Michigan from Oklahoma. I
picked up a copy of your paper and enjoyed it very much. I got a chuckle
out of and felt a need to respond to Bob Lovik’s letter (“Setting
things straight,” 8/6). Perhaps I can help “set him straight.”

Thanks
to the uninformed, fear-mongering liberal media, this new and
threatening process called fracking is the latest and greatest threat to
our environment. News flash, fracking has been around for DECADES. Feel
free to consult U-M or MSU professors of geology or petroleum
engineering to confirm.

Procuring energy in any of its many forms can pose
some environmental threats. For example, the thousands of birds, many
of which are endangered species, killed by the giant windmills that
generate electricity.

There is little evidence to
support that fracking is some kind of environmental threat waiting to
happen. I don’t glow in the dark, my son is perfectly normal, my water
doesn’t spontaneously combust...

In
response to “Get off my Lawn” by George Nemetz (Letters 7/23). First, I
assure you that I am well under the age of 80, if that even matters.
Also, the Express is not solely read by your age group of 30 and under.

Michigan
has lifted a ban on some of the higher grades of fireworks and you can
now obtain a permit to use the more powerful grade.

I
also had problems with my dogs climbing the walls when a neighbor was
setting off professional grade fireworks for several nights in my
neighborhood. These are not just bottle rockets and firecrackers, they
are the ones that are shot high in the air and are so loud they shake
your house. The police were called by many in my neighborhood about
this.

With the fire danger being so high, I was very concerned about my home and my neighbors’ homes catching on fire...

“...the
fundamental chapter of this horrific story should focus on the innocent
children and the powerful people who let them down.”

-- Ed Ray, chairman of the NCAA’s executive committee

A
months-long coma would have been the only way to have escaped hearing
of the tragic events at Penn State. At first, the sickening realization
that former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky sexually
abused at least eight underage boys on or near university property. Then
the deep disappointment in learning an investigation by former FBI
director Louis Freeh found school officials, including the school
president and vice president, head football coach Joe Paterno, and
athletic director had known about the allegations of child abuse as
early as 1998, but failed to disclose them.

Now the
NCAA has handed down penalties that some say are close to a “death
penalty” for the school’s football program, including a $60 million
fine, four year bowl-ban, loss of some scholarships and withdrawal of
wins dating back to 1998. The statue honoring Joe Paterno has been
removed by the university. Sadly ironic, the statue’s inscription reads,
“Educator, Coach, Humanitarian.”

These appalling
events and revelations have shed light on behaviors most people would
rather not examine. Yet it also creates awareness of deep-seated
cultural attitudes and hopefully a willingness to learn more about
ourselves, our society and what we value...

After reading the Letters to the Editors in the July 16th issue I am very curious - how old are the readers of The Express?!

This
publication has had an edge to it since its inception and has never
been afraid to ask some very hard questions or to tip-toe the line
between aggressive and conservative. I’ve read it for years (I’m 30) and
so have my friends and perhaps I was assuming something untrue in that
the readers tended to be under the age of 80.

The
letters people have written take on this point of view of an old man
sitting on his porch yelling at kids to get off of his lawn. It doesn’t
fit!

For instance - the letter about fireworks is
unreasonable. Really? Your neighbors were using expensive
professional-grade fireworks? The kind the Cherry Fest can’t even afford
to use...

The new
Michigan fireworks law does untold damage to the environment, wildlife,
pets and our personal right to quiet and safety in our own homes.

On
July 7th and numerous times, between late June through September, I
have been jolted out of bed by neighbors setting off extremely loud
fireworks – the kind used in public displays.

I have
had to rearrange my life to accommodate my neighbors “fun.” This
includes getting my dog up to the house and into a closet at night
before the fireworks start, which is always a guess. Then waking him up
after midnight to pee because he was too scared to pee on the way to the
house.

I have had to remain up till after midnight on
evenings when I was not feeling well or just needed to sleep because I
work long hours. I have heard others say that their children are scared
awake in the middle of the night from neighbors fireworks.

Veterans
with PTSD call the 4th of July “a day from hell.” Deer are reported to
have miscarriages from fear after explosions and I can’t imagine the
pain of birds or bats with sensitive hearing, not to mention the toxic
heavy metal smoke from the fireworks that they are forced to breathe
which can cause digestive disorders, cancer and asthma attacks...